Berlin 2010-BERLINALE MINI-REVIEWS #2

Here's a wrap of some of the films I've seen that stuck out. I'd like to take a moment to thank DFD editor Alan Bacchus for his invaluable guidance, the Berlinale staff for the opportunity, my Frau Daniela for her patience and Jacob Sullivan for his couch and ashtray. And thanks to you for your support of Daily Film Dose.

By Blair Stewart

How I Ended the Summer (2010) dir. Alexei Popogrebsky
Starring: Grigori Dobrygin and Sergei Puskepalis

**1/2

The most Herzogian of films in the festival, "How I Ended the Summer" has a gruff man and a punk kid stuck together on a remote weather station waiting for their ship to come in literally. Alone in the Arctic, the setting is haunting with the endless horizon and the threat of polar bears, so when the younger meteorologist makes a crucial error and keeps screwing up afterwards I believed the psychological strain he was under. Takes far too long to reach its tense conclusion, but Popogrebsky is a director I'll keep an eye out for in the future.
WON: BEST ACTOR PRIZE FOR DOBRYGIN/PUSKEPALIS AND OUTSTANDING ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION


If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle "Eu Cand Vreau Sa Fluier, Fluier" (2010)
dir. Florin Serban
Starring: George Piştereanu and Ada Condeescu

**1/2

Much lauded at the Berlinale, "If I Want to Whistle" is a Romanian handheld docu-drama set inside a reform school that should quickly remind one of the Dardennes output. A hand-wringer about a young convict in his last days of incarceration who deals with a family crisis in a novel way is both revealing and packed with a few twists, but I don't feel its worthy of a Golden Bear, it just didn't reinvent the wheel for me. The performance by newcomer (and non-actor) Piştereanu should earn him the attention of future leading roles, perhaps Romania's answer to Vincent Cassel or Russell Crowe. He has that fire in his belly.
WON: RUNNER-UP SILVER BEAR JURY PRIZE AND CINEMATIC INNOVATION AWARD


Please Give (2010) dir. by Nicole Holofcener
Starring: Cathrine Keener and Rebecca Hall

**1/2

A bright spot in female-driven comedy direction, Nicole Holofcener's ("Lovely and Amazing, "Friends with Money") latest "Please Give" is nice and kinda funny, but also twee and kinda forgettable. Somewhere Woody Allen just felt a chill. Concerning the guilty consciences of uptight Manhattanites in personal relationships and public appearances, Catherine Keener plays against type as a bleeding-heart used furniture store owner who preys on the collections of the newly dead to turn a profit. My crush of Rebecca Hall and her acting abilities continues as the granddaughter of the next-door neighbour; a potential mark for Keener's re-sale value. A few laughs and all but I failed to reach the transcendence the self-absorbed characters may have achieved.


Red Hill (2010) dir. by Patrick Hughes
Starring: Ryan Kwanten, Tom E. Lewis and Steve Bisley

**

Based on the recent gems coming out of Oz and my love of "The Proposition" I skipped Noah Baumbach's latest to see this. Whoops. A modern Antipodean bloody revenge Western where the writer, director and editor might know the music of Walter Hill, "El Mariachi", Carpenter and early Raimi but they sure as hell don't know the beat. Suffers from a stilted pace, a wildly unnecessary 3rd act expository-flashback-monologue by the protagonist and most damning for a debut, an interesting sub-plot with a cheap CGI pay-off. Coulda, shoulda, woulda.


Caterpillar (2010) dir. by Koji Wakamatsu
Starring: Shinobu Terajima and Shima Ohnishi

**

Koji Wakamatsu's scorched-earth rant of the foolhardy ideals placed in the minds of Japanese peasants during the wars in China and the Pacific, "Caterpillar" is an agonising experience with two brave performances. A hideously deformed soldier returns from the second Sino-Japanese War and his wife feels forced to take care of the "War God" as he is called. Gradually she'll regard him in much less lofty terms and we'll experience flashbacks to his abuses both in the household and on the battlefield. A soldier with a belief in his status as a Deity of Battle would be unlikely to have qualms with the Rape of Nanking, it is in his right after all as the victor, no? Intelligent in its commentary and the acting by Terajima and Ohnishi but undone by a garish, exploitative visual style shot with a lousy digital camera. Cut out the crap and this would have been the best of the festival. Unforgettable in part due to the amputee sex.
WON: BEST ACTRESS AWARD FOR SHINOBU TERAJIMA


Puzzle "Rompecabezas" (2010) dir. by Natalia Smirnoff
Starring: Maria Onetto

***

An Argentinean charmer I would take my old Lady to see if it passes through town, "Puzzle" is about a browbeaten housewife who comes into her own in the high-stakes world of puzzle solving. A plain critique of Argentina's stuffy attitudes toward women (the lousy male bastards get away with murder down there!) that was also enjoyably frothy and easy on the eyes.

Berlin 2010-THE KILLER INSIDE ME

The Killer Inside Me (2010) dir. by Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba

**1/2

By Blair Stewart

And it was all just going so damn well before the ending. Arriving at the Berlinale after a controversal Sundance premiere, the prolific Michael Winterbottom's latest is a frank adaptation of Jim Thompson's "The Killer Inside Me" with a 1950's small-town 'aw' shucks, ma'am' wacko-killer sheriff. If you feel resentment for revealing that nugget of info or failing to put down a 'spoiler warning' beforehand, I suggest you refrain from reading the title of the film, ok?

Central City, Texas is enjoying the post-war oil boom and the clean streets are patroled by the chipper and handsome Casey Affleck as Deputy Lou Ford. If you're familiar with the younger Affleck's work from his debut in Gus Van Zant's 'To Die For" to his Oscar-nominated Robert Ford in "The Assassaination of Jesse James" you'll know the ease with which he can flick on a creepy switch-like a bug is going to up and crawl out of his throat at any moment. Good-ol' boy Lou gets mixed up with a connected prostitute played by Jessica Alba as one of the more improbable ladies of the night in American film history since Julia Roberts worked the streets.

Deals will go bad and folks will find themselves dead and Sheriff Lou will spin longer and longer yarns at the D.A. to stay out of the electric chair. As the film progresses Lou's sadism (and peculiar childhood activites, spanking fetish ahoy!) towards the women in his life is revealed, hence the controversy which itself is a quaint idea in the age of Google search engines. Watching Lou's psyche being peeled back makes for hypnotic viewing as Affleck's eyes have the right shade of ice to them when he needs it. Surrounding the Sheriff is a cast of Kate Hudson, Ned Beatty, Elais Koteas and Bill Pullman doing their Southern twangs well as his potential victims if they hang around long enough.

I'm sure Winterbottom was amped up to direct "The Killer Inside Me", it has a certain appeal for a Brit with Thompson's singular pulp Tex-Mex setting. You can see that joy in the lovingly-designed opening credits and the camera work of Marcel Zyskind, and for 98.5 % of the film it works-something nasty and slippery with a Lone Star bite, another "Blood Simple" was coming down the pike.

And then the ending happened.

While the final moments are true to Thompson's classic the delivery by Winterbottom and John Curran's script is flubbed. The finale is intended as a cruel death's head joke but it arrives with the bumbling execution of an audible fart on the soundtrack. Where I should have felt a punch in my gut instead I had to make due with the Benny Hill theme song playing inside my own mind from the plot and character inconsistencies pilling up. What a shame.

A missed shot at a classic, but if Winterbottom continues to churn out work he'll likely make up for this.

Berlin 2010 - JEW SUSS: RISE AND FALL

Jew Suss: Rise and Fall "Jud Suss" (2010) dir. Oskar Roehler
Starring: Tobias Moretti, Moritz Bleibtreu and Martina Gedeck

**1/2

By Blair Stewart

In 1939 Austrian actor Ferdinand Marian got in bed with Joseph Goebbels to make the National Socialist version of "Jew Suss" and paid a far heavier price than fame.

As played by Tobias Moretti for a vain fool who cracks under the weight of Nazi-influenced pressure, Marian succumbed to the same temptations as the fictional star of István Szabó's "Mephisto" (or as the famed Dutsch performer Gustaf Gründgens did in real life to which the book and film were based). It's all so wonderful; the fame and the girls and the rallies and the parties and whatnot, it would be a real shame if we lost the war, you know?

Taking examples from other European performers' lives who were torn asunder by the undesirable status of their bloodlines, director and co-writer Oskar Roehler lays on the melodrama thickly for the doomed life of Marian. His wife Anna (Martina Gedeck) is secretly a Jew, and Marian himself is flush with guilt from his swordsman reputation towards his comely fans. Ferdinand is no match for the recruitment prowess of the Propaganda Minister Goebbels when he comes casting, and so Marian allows himself to become a victim of history by appearing in the titular role (according to diaries Marian held out on the role for over a year).

For those not familiar with the infamy of the 1940 Veit Harlan version of "Jew Suss", it was to anti-semetism what sugar is to a kid's energy level: fuel.

Now this right here is a great story:

You have human tragedy on both a minor and a grand scale. You have vanity, personal deceit, professional duty and the crushing weight of history.

You've got the seduction of evil, true evil in the persona of Herr Goebbels, better know as Hitler's talking head.

You have the cinema and the manipulation of truth through storytelling to breed madness.

You put this in the hands of a great filmmaker and the film takes off like a rocket. Unfortunately Oskar Roehler is not that filmmaker, and "Jew Suss: Rise and Fall" is not that film. It begins as a stiff monochrome effort in the guise of studio dramas from the late 1930-40s and never moves beyond it. Despite the fine performances including Moritz Bleibtreu as a Goebbels who makes you want to mop the floor clean after he's walked by, nothing new is brought to the table. We could just as well be watching Gründgens or Harlan's story and because Ferdinand Marian is presented in the opening as a weak prick I felt only mild pity when he died a weaker prick in the end.

This material is the stuff of epics, and the debacle of Goebbels reign deserves a bigger stage.

Berlin 2010 - THE ILLUSIONIST

The Illusionist (2010) dir. by Sylvain Chomet
Starring: An animated Jacques Tati

***1/2

By Blair Stewart

A heart-warming animated tale that had been collecting dust for a half-century, Sylvain Chomet returns long-dead film legend Jacques Tati to the cinema in "The Illusionist".

Tati and writing partner Henri Marquet ("Mr. Hulot's Holiday", "The Big Day") had collaborated in 1956 on the story of an erstwhile great magician and a young girl tagging along around Europe. The script was intended as a personal letter to Tati's abandoned daughter Helga but circumstances, shame and the immense production of "Playtime" scuppered the film. Years later Chomet, with the success of "The Triplets of Belleville," was handed the idea by Tati's family (thankfully we'd been saved the live-action sight of Roberto Benigni or Steve Martin as Tati's great creation-the stiff, bumbling galoot that is Monsieur Hulot in magician's robes).

What follows is standard for Tati's body of work; non-existent dialogue, an anachronistic character at odds with changing times with little bits of visual humour throughout. The setting was originally meant for 1950's Czechoslovakia but Chomet fell in love with Edinburgh's stones and fog and rain (having been there I'll emphasize it: tons of rain) and wisely moved the story there, it has the mystique of an animated world.

"The Illusionist" doesn't try to overwhelm with emotion and laughter like Disney's work but the breezy charm may win you over. Don't regard it as highly as Chomet's 2003 surreal spectacular "Belleville", but as a muted little film in comparison, and I might be too forgiving with my rating, but every time we see the cartoon Tati/Hulot created by lead animator Laurent Kircher on screen my heart grew three times it's size. What can I say, I'm just a big softy when it comes to Tati and Chomet. Take your kids.

Berlin 2010-BERLINALE MINI-REVIEWS #1

By Blair Stewart

Hi everybody, I'm averaging four films a day here so now's a good time to catch up on some of the work I've seen so far.

Winter's Bone (2010) dir. Debra Granik
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes

***1/2

The big winner at Sundance this year, and already lauded here at DFD, "Winter's Bone" is a classical western moved to the crank-stained hills of the Ozarks. Star-in-the-making Jennifer Lawrence is Ree, the daughter of a meth cooker who's vanished like a puff of smoke around the same time bail bondsmen are coming to collect either him or the family home. Ree will have to spiral down into a white-trash Dante's Inferno to find him while failing to stay on the good side of her terrifying Uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes of "Deadwood" and "American Gangster" acclaim playing mid-70's Dennis Hopper as Charlie Manson). The characters and setting are true to the very marrow, and "Winter's Bone" is made for the Criterion collection.


Submarino (2010) dir. Thomas Vinterberg
Starring: Jakob Cedergren and Peter Plaugborg

**

Thomas Vinterberg's comeback attempt since wandering out in the ether after "The Celebration" is a hearty dose of Danish misery disguised as realism. Jakob Cedergren delivers the best male performance of the Berlinale I've seen so far as one of two brothers traumatised by their youth, but outside of a strong opening the navel-gazing soon overwhelms as I saw where we were heading. Wildly over-praised so far by the press ("it's just so honest and gritty!"), and could very well win the Golden Bear despite my meagre protests. We've seen this tragedy before and it was told far better.


Portrait of the Fighter as a Young Man "Portretul Luptatorului La Tinerete" (2010) dir. Constantin Popescu
Starring: Constantin Ditá

*1/2

Displaying the unwavering stubborness of a pedant who can't edit himself, Constantin Popescu's "Portrait" is a potentially great 100 minute film trapped inside a sluggish 163 minute opus. The story of Ion Gavrilă-Ogoranu and his Romanian freedom fighters rebelling against the Reds could have been a masterpiece if it wasn't assembled in this order: Skirmish, retreat, speech, repeat. Skirmish, retreat, speech, repeat. And onwards. The only number higher than the body count of the freedom fighters was the amount of critics prematurely fleeing the screening. The letdown of the festival in my books, but one that could be saved by a re-edit.


One Day "You Yi Tian" (2010) dir. Hou Chi-Jan
Starring: Nikki Hsin-Ying Hsieh and Gwen Yao

*

Executive-produced by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, I figured a Taiwanese dreamscape would be up to snuff with the craft of Bunuel, Lynch and Kar-Wai. Sadly Chi-Jan appears only to dream of watching paint dry with an occasional horse turning up. Next!


The Initiation "Blutsfreundschaft" (2010) dir. Peter Kern
Starring: Helmut Berger and Harry Lampl

*

The worst film I've seen at a film festival since 2001's "Suicide Club" in Vancouver. An unholy fusion of skinhead "Apt Pupil" via early Almodovar as directed by Edward D. Wood Jr., "The Initiation" shoves amateur comedy where drama should be and vice-versa. Should the braintrust of the Pentagon ever catch this poorly-written, incompentently directed offensive shit-box on a future episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" the Marine Corps will be dispatched to Austria.

Berlin 2010-THE ROBBER

The Robber "Der Rauber" (2010) dir. Benjamin Heisenberg
Starring: Andreas Lust and Franziska Weisz

***

By Blair Stewart

If you're going to pick an interesting hobby, you could do worse than a bank robbery. A dry procedural about an extraordinary man makes for one of the surprises of the Berlinale.

"The Robber" relates the life of Austrian marathon runner, thrill junkie and career criminal Johannes Rettenberger. Adapted from the book "Der Rauber", Rettenbergen, as played with quiet pathological menace by Andreas Lust, had a public 'lust' for running and a private one for stealing. Upon his release from prison Johannes easily shifts back into his old habits with an animal compulsion to do only what he knows and desires, often for the spike of his heart rate as he barrels across Vienna from police gunfire. In due time Johannes hooks-up with his old lady Erika, who as a criminal case worker for the local government has another form of weakness-she loves the bastard.

Relinqished of melodrama, "The Robber" observes a man who's great at the skill of his own downfall with a clinical eye and a shrug. No explanation of a tortured childhood or disgust with modern society, Johannes just wanted to go fast, and all the better while being chased. This was an objective tactic used recently in Mann's "Public Enemies" to middling effect; John Dillinger was presented both as a tough-guy myth and a mortal who just enjoyed stealing, whereas Rettenberger comes across as a single-minded force of nature in a run or on the run.

Director Heisenberg shows a great skill for action that's becoming lost in American cinema, there's fast-cutting chases but for once it's action we can follow. The script is tight and drained of artifice, and as serious as a German bellhop. Worth seeing alone for the third act surprise, and worthy of being remade by Hollywood down the road should it be noticed.

Berlin 2010 - EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) dir. by Banksy
Featuring: Banksy, Space Invader and Thierry Guetta

***

By Blair Stewart

A good documentary that could well be another elaborate prank from a renowned King amongst pranksters, "Exit Through the Gift Shop" plays the magic trick of exchanging the filmmaker and subject halfway through the story.

Over the past three decades vandalism has wrought street-art, therefore turning exposed public cement into blank canvases. Shepard Fairey of the iconic Barack Obama "Hope" campaign stands at the forefront of the movement alongside the cheeky mosaic work of Space Invader, spackling his work from Perth to Prague that's likely on your own street. But one figure has consistently grabbed headlines while remaining in the shadows, the legendary satirical political-art provocateur Banksy. The English artist who's moved well beyond humble grafitti days in Bristol, an international reputation has grown for Banksy with the following stunts:

1. Sneaking a Guantanomo Bay blow-up doll into Disneyland.
2. Putting his framed work up on the walls of the Louvre...without telling anyone.
3. Turning the Gaza Wall in Palestine into a public gallery under Israeli gun sights.
4. Spraying on the Tate Britain "MIND THE CRAP" with an arrow pointing towards the ceremony for the Turner Art Prize.
Basically, the man has a good sense of humour with a pair of iron-clad nuts.

As Banksy and co. were having their jollies Thierry Guetta was constantly filming them, a Frenchman who purported himself to be a documentarian on street-art and becomes the focal point of "Exit...". Gradually it will be revealed that Thierry is as much a cohesive filmmaker as Peter Sellers in "Being There" was a worthy Presidential candidate: He just happened to show up at the right place.

To the annoyance of Banksy after inheriting the tape back-catalogue, the attention-deficit stricken Guetta's life will take further twists that call into question art appreciation, media hype and the fine line between stupid and clever. The narrative that comes from Thierry's opportunistic life is the result of Banksy and his editors doing enough yeoman's work with the found footage to exhaust an experimental art-film collective.

Using the same self-deprecating wit (with a pint of fist-pumping accomplishment) that has endeared him to fans of his monkey-faced self portraits, Banksy takes a minor subject and shoves in enough human comedy to make it cohesive.

Interestingly, the heights to which the director has gone for socio-political commentary makes me question whether Guetta is genuinely real or a creation of Andy Kaufman proportions. As city councils whitewash their efforts away "Exit Through the Gift Shop" shows the zeitgeist of urban artists laying claim to their environment before the imitators show up.

See it for the art world's Zorro, less so for the crap that trails him.

Berlin 2010-A WOMAN, A GUN AND A NOODLE SHOP

A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop "San Qiang Pai An Jing Qi" (2010)
dir. by Zhang Yimou
Starring: Honglei Sun, Dahong Ni and Ni Yan

**

By Blair Stewart

A self-explanatory title for a cultural oddity, Zhang Yimou has remade the Coen Bros. debut "Blood Simple" into a mildly-forgettable show of buffoonery in Technicolor.

Taking Godard's theory of filmmaking and shoe-horning a noodle shop in there, the backwater pulp tale is moved from 80's Texas to imperial China in the belly of the Gobi desert. The Noodle Shop owner (Dahong Ni) is a spiteful ol' burlap sack who hires the local policeman (Honglei Sun riffing on Beat Takeshi's stone-faced countenance very well) to whack his trophy Wife (Ni Yan) and her hired 'help' (Xiao Shen-Yang).

If you're already familiar with "Blood Simple" you'll know all the double-crossings and grave-diggings will stack up like pancakes and if you aren't you should be by now. *smacking the latter-half of readers with a rolled-up newspaper*

What Zhang Yimou brings to this sidewinder tale apart from changing the setting is a digitally-enhanced colour scheme that would surely make Baz Luhrmann tip his light meter and added some very broad traditional Chinese comedy as well. And when I say broad I mean pratfalls, prop teeth and loads of shrieking, hoo-boy. While the film is not without merit because of the intensely beautiful surroundings it also doesn't have enough substance to surpass the American version, despite Sun's deadpan and Yan's screen luminosity.

If you want a good fix for down-and-dirty behaviour you should surely pay well for the pure stuff, not the imitation knock-off.

BTW-"A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop" was in dire need of more noodles.

Berlin 2010-THE COUNTING OF THE DAMAGES

The Counting of the Damages* "El Recuento de los Daños" (2009)
dir. by Ines de Oliveira Cezar
Starring: Eva Bianco and Santiago Gobernori

*1/2

By Blair Stewart

1. If you're making an exploration of family grief in present-day Argentina don't short-change your audience's intelligence with an unwieldy mass of head-shaking coincidences.

2. Only use a numerical chapter system in your film if each section either advances or diverges from the expectations of the previous chapter. See "Dogville" for a good example. Otherwise you might find yourself in a dark cinema praying for 'ocho' to become 'nueve'.

3. When the brother-in-law said he was an 'astrologer' was that supposed to be a joke? If so the script's sign is in Cancer.

4. Labourious non-action and detachment is a poor substitute for storytelling verve and emotional involvement.

5. I now have a better understanding of that whole 'la bronca' thing that ex-pats from Buenos Aires are always talking about.

6. You can only have so many shots of characters mournfully standing alongside waterways before one wishes for said characters to go for a swim.

7. It's nice to make a metaphor for the scars of the defunct military dicatorship but it also fills the audience with the desire to see Polanski's "Death and the Maiden" instead.

8. Whoever suggested the plinky-plonky piano score may in fact be a saboteur. Flush them out!

9. Is Argentina berefit of Zoloft?

10. As the end credit rolled I fought an immense desire to raise my arms aloft and shout out 'Pour Que?!?'.

*If you give yourself the albatross of a pretentious title you should expect the theme of a snarky review to be 'The Airing of the Grievances'.

Berlin 2010 - SHUTTER ISLAND

Shutter Island (2010) dir. Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo and Michelle Williams

****

By Blair Stewart

Let's get the fat out of the way quick so we can get to the meat: "Shutter Island" is in my opinion the best Martin Scorsese has done since "Casino" and a career high for Leonardo DiCaprio. After the thematic disapointment of "Gangs of New York", a tepid highlight reel that was "The Aviator" and the wealth of overpraisement for "The Departed", the director and his current muse have hit paydirt on their 4th try.

Based on the Dennis Lehane ("Mystic River", "Gone, Baby, Gone") novel, U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels (Dicaprio) and Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) are dispatched to an asylum on the outer-Boston hub of Shutter Island to find a missing child-killer (Emily Mortimer) in the 1950's. A prison sans an exit for the criminally insane, Ashecliffe Asylum is on the cusp of a gathering storm and therefore a foul haunt for the unravelling psyche of the widowed Daniels. The ex-GI's mind is besieged with trama from the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, and his dead wife Dolores (Michelle Williams) keeps popping up to offer worthy detective/spousal advice. As Daniels and Aule stumble through the fog of bullshit blowing in from Ben Kingsley as the chief psychiatrist the private stratgems of Daniels, the Doctor and the inmates intertwine.

That's as far as I'll describe a plot that allows Scorsese to indulge in his adulation of the cinematic trickery Welles, Fuller, and Hitchcock once employed in the realm of psychological thrillers. It's a shame to think that Saul Bass couldn't have provided an iconic opening credit sequence, it would have been a fat, juicy cherry on top. Some of the script material is shlock-Lobotomies! Crashing Thunder! Ted Levine as the Warden!-and some of the material is deeply tramatic-the Dachau flashbacks have a particular brutality for a major Hollywood release.

The genius of Scorsese, and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and cameraman Robert Richardson, and Dante Ferrati's sets, and Laeta Kalogridis's adaptation, and finally Robbie Robertson bringing his best for the music supervision (so, so, so good this time around), is all the elements come together seemlessly. This surely could have been an overwrought headslapper, and there is noticable flab in later sections of the film, but Scorsese is a great chef and he wants to feed you something both familiar from his "Cape Fear" period and something strangely new for him, venturing well into the expressionist horror of Wiene's "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". You might even guess the ending as I suspected it to be but the journey there earns the above rating.

The flaws of some moments that might better have been left to the imagination can be overlooked when you come across Dicaprio and Patricia Clarkson making plot revelations sing like a jailbird. If the thrill of that reel wasn't reward enough having Levine, Elias Koteas and Jackie Earle Haley show up to heist scenes feels like a surprise party for lovers of character actors.

Tarantino recenly spoke of the ruefulness that DePalma had felt towards Scorsese as "Raging Bull" was coming out and Tarantino might now understand that same feeling-Martin Scorsese is still very much Martin Scorsese. In regard to Dicaprio, who is both painting himself into a corner with these ulcerous roles and still managing to find new pockets of mental despair, he's wonderfully growing into the next James Cagney minus the dancing chops. As I once looked forward to Scorsese and DeNiro teaming up I now wait with anticipation for more work from one of the last remaining Maestros and his star performer.

In closing, you should get your ass to the cinema.

Berlin 2010 - THE GHOST WRITER

The Ghost Writer (2010) dir. by Roman Polanski
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan and Olivia Williams

***

By Blair Stewart

Topical and skillfully made, Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer" will likely be dealt the same stiff box-office opposition that "State of Play" and "Body of Lies" faced from a public enraptured with blue aborginal space-cats instead of Afganistan and Homeland Security. Regardless, the latest from the Polish master takes the post-9/11 political climate and uses the tools for a display of his ingrained caustic wit and understanding of filmic suspense.

A nameless scribe (Ewan McGregor) is hustled into a lucrative book deal to ghost-write the memoirs of recently deposed British Prime Minister Alan Lang (Pierce Brosnan, well cast with his smarmy ageing charm as a stand-in for Tony Blair). Lang's book has been on hold since his previous ghost writer became a literal one under iffy circumstances along the shores of Lang's property on Martha's Island. Brought into Lang's inner circle as a shitstorm erupts around the ex-PM's condoning of illegal rendition while in office, the Ghost Writer picks up the threads left by his deceased predecessor. He'll also find himself uncomfortably close to Lang's discarded wife played by Olivia Williams, who has had a great comeback year with her supporting role in "An Education".

One of the adult thrills is seeing McGregor and Williams strike sparks off of each other with fine banter. Another joy is watching Polanski and Robert Harris adapting from his own novel take your standard hokum thriller and wring moments of brilliance out of it, where the tension of a note being passed at a party would make Clouzot's phantom happy.

Much of the action unfolds inside the Lang compound, a post-modern cement bunker that the protagonists of "Repulsion", "The Tenant" and "Rosemary's Baby" would feel a kinship with.

I had deep reservation going into the film; any work featuring the questionable supporting cast of Jim Belushi, Kim Cattrall and Timothy Hutton will do that to me. And yet I've forgotten an old rule that I've bludgeoned film-geek friends with in the past: A great director can make lesser actors look good, and in that regard Belushi, Catrall and Hutton are well cast.

Unfortunately problems still cropped up in my first viewing. The film has the distracting air-brushed sheen of a movie that's passed through the D.I. suite too many times in post, and it also suffers from a lag in the middle when the pacing should be picking up towards the climax.

Despite these faults that kept "The Ghost Writer" from joining "Chinatown" and "The Pianist" on Polanski's top-shelf work, well-made adult suspense is still cause for celebration. Enjoy.

Berlin 2010 - HOWL

Howl (2010) dir. by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman
Starring: James Franco, Bob Balaban and Jon Hamm

**

By Blair Stewart

"I just find animation to be so....didactic."
-Actual quote from a jackass I knew in Toronto, August 2008

Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman tackle 1950's poet Allen Ginsberg underground masterpiece "Howl and Other Poems" as its noterity took him overground in a triptych of re-enactment, courtroom drama and visual art. His slim collection of work that touched on drug use and homosexual sex in America brought about the ire of the conservative Right onto the indie publisher, setting up scenes of verbal sparring between David Strathairn prosecuting in the name of decenency and Jon Hamm in defense of free speech with Bob Balaban holding the gavel. Inter-cutting this drama is a Time magazine interview and the first public reading of "Howl" with James Franco as Ginsberg.

As the (in)famous writer Franco continues on a path of excellent career choices he's made since that burnout Saul in "Pineapple Express", his performance relaxed and unshowy barring the nerves on opening night when he let a bunch of drunk college students peek inside his brain. As Ginsberg launches into "Howl" the film once again inter-cuts to its final piece: Animation, and the reason why I started this review with that memorable quote.

In comparison the similiar work of Berman and Pulcini's "American Splendor" brilliantly broke the fourth wall to communicate Harvey Pekar's humanist autobiographical comics while Cronenberg grafted his own twisted fetishes on Burrough's "Naked Lunch". (Burrough's himself likely knowing a thing or two about a thing or two when it came to fetishes) What causes me concernation is the fact Epstein and Friedman of documentary acclaim with "The Celluloid Closet" and "The Times of Harvey Milk" keep returning to the same pail of water once the courtroom and Ginsberg readings run dry-I can only see the poems of "Howl" literally visualised with animated men playing flaming saxophones and bulldozers mowing down fields of flowers on female-shaped hills before I get queasy with baby-boomer nostalgia.

It's about as enjoyable as listening to another damn story concerning Woodstock, Hendrix and Haight-Ashbury or all of the above. On top of these repeated transgressions we also have to deal with the boldly underlined "free speech!" moment and the impact of Ginsberg's genius being expressed by the camera crash-zooming on the faces of kids hearing "Howl" and just having their minds totally blown, man. That might fly on HBO, but not so in the cinema. Ginsberg work had pockets of subtlety, pity the same can't be said for this film.

I couldn't resist:
"Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir!"
-"The Big Lebowski, Joel and Ethan Coen, March 1998.

Berlin 2010 - APART TOGETHER

Apart Together "Tuan Yuan" (2010) dir. Wang Quan'an
Starring: Lisa Lu, Ling Feng and Monica Mo

***

by Blair Stewart

The 2010 Berlinale opens with a sublime look at the seeds sown from the division between China and Taiwan and the old world and the new.

Elderly grandmother Qiao Yu'e(Lisa Lu) remembers well the final days of the National People's Party in the Shanghai of 1949 and the last time she saw her lover Lui Yangsheng (Ling Feng). The soldier Lui fled for Taiwan over a half-century ago, leaving Yu'e with a cracked heart, a baby on the way and the Cultural Revolution around the corner.

Fifty years on as tensions relax between the nations the door opens for a still-spry Lui to return to Yu'e side, upsetting the applecart of her new family as around them the glass-and-metal smokestacks of New Shanghai bares down on what is left of the old city quarters.

A small film on the big subject of modern China shedding dying skin that's been depicted in Jia Zhang-Ke's "Still Life" and "The World", Wang Quan'an's "Apart Together" won't blow down your door but sneaks up on you with wry observations visualized by excellent long-takes. Lu and Feng certainly have a chemistry as two wrinkled old farts raising each others' pulses but it's the performance of Xui Caigen as Lu's hilariously windbaggy husband Lao (who happens to be a former Mao-era army officer) that pushes the film from 'decent' to a 'memorable'. It's worth seeing alone for the unexpected songs that made this reviewer's head and heart all soft.